B'deshi filmmaker Mokammel's love for poems on screen and off

If you ask acclaimed Bangladeshi parallel cinema director Tanveer Mokammel whether he wanted to be a poet or a filmmaker, he would just laugh.
He has no choice, perhaps, for he is equally fascinated by both. There are compelling reasons to do so.
Mokammel, 60, began writing poems during his university days in the mid-70s much before he moved behind the camera in early 80s. Since his first poem was published in 1981, he never gave it up not quite knowing that one day he would turn a director. Some of his poems have also been published in the prestigious Bengali magazine "Desh" in Kolkata.

In fact, poetry played an important part in Mokammel's emergence as a filmmaker. His first film -- a documentary "Hoolia" (Warrant) -- is based on a famous poem by leading Bangladeshi poet Nirmalendu Gun and his two other documentaries -- "Bastrabaalikara" (The Garment Girls) on the exploitation of female workers in the country's garments factories and "Swapnabhumi" (The Promised Land) on the life of Urdu-speaking Bihari Muslims stranded in Bangladesh post-independence were born out of poems written by the director himself.
That's not all. Mokammel has used another poem of his in his epic documentary on the country's liberation war "Smriti Ekattor" (Memories of 1971). Besides, there is a lyrical beauty in his feature films like "Nadir Naam Madhumati" and "Chitra Nadir Paarey", especially in their portrayal of Bangladesh countryside. So, if Mokammel is into direction, he's almost invariably into poetry-writing.

And an important turning point in trying his hand in poetry-writing came on August 1 when he was coaxed into reciting his own poems before a distinguished gathering at the Bangladeshi Film Institute which he heads.
It was a day of nervousness and reckoning for Mokammel, a veteran director of six feature films and 14 documentaries and short films, when was faced with an audience that included a number of young established practitioners of poetry including Swapan Adnan and Rubi Rahman at the event organised by "Kobitar Platform", starting off with "Nodikotha", a poem on rivers.
"I felt quite nervous to recite my own poems before such a distinguished gathering of poets and was apprehensive about their reaction to my efforts. But in the end, I was happy with the reaction," Mokammel told PTI.